Scarleteen

I have never had sex without a condom and I have had a period since my last "scare", however, I keep coming across stories where women keep getting what they thought was their period and still ended up being pregnant. I have even read stories where they got their period and had multiple negative pregnancy tests but somehow a baby showed up. I only recently became sexually active so I'm pretty new to all of this and on top of that I am a generally anxious person. How do I learn to get over this fear of never knowing if i'm pregnant and is it even possible to just be pregnant without noticing any signs?

Hi there Sunflower, welcome to Scarleteen.

I'm sorry to hear you're stressing out so much. Because fears about pregnancy are so common, we have a lot of resources for folks in your shoes; I think the most helpful one will be The Pregnancy Panic Companion, which can guide you to a page with specific advice about how to start managing your fears in your particular situation.

You'll find this advice there too, but I wanted to mention it here, because it's one of the best things you can do for yourself right now: please stop looking up pregnancy-related horror stories online! All that reading those stories will do for you is keep you in a heightened state of anxiety and cutting them out will, I think, be a big help to you. It might be useful to come up with something you can do instead so if you get in a super anxious place and think "oh no, I need to look up a lot of worst-case scenarios online!!" you will be able to stop yourself before you do that and redirect that energy into something distracting, creative, comforting, etc.

Hi, Sunflower12345! Mo has excellent advice!

The only thing I wanted to add was - you said you are generally a pretty anxious person. Does your anxiety often have you feeling stuck like this? Do you have some healthy coping mechanisms in place for this anxiety? Do you see anyone about your anxiety? If you don't have some methods in place that usually help you deal with your anxieties, you might really think about talking with someone if at all possible.

Thank you so much for your replies! I am looking into getting help for my anxiety but unfortunately one of my coping mechanisms at the moment is trying to find an explanation for whatever "bad" feeling I have and in this case it kind of back-fired because it led me to finding a bunch of scary stuff about pregnancy on the internet. However, I have talked to someone and they've reminded me that a lot of those stories on the internet tend to leave out a bunch of factors and if getting your period wasn't a sure way of telling if you're pregnant or not it wouldn't be relied on so much.

Hi Sunflower12345.

That is correct. The only reliable sign of pregnancy is a positive pregnancy test and getting your period is a reliable sign that you're not pregnant. I understand wanting to feel informed and in control by doing lots of research (I am one of those people too!) but yes, as you've found, the internet can be an endless pit of not-so-accurate information. Weeding out reliable and accurate sources (like us, and we keep up to date with evolving science and best practices) and focusing solely on them can help a lot. It's only a coping mechanism for as long as you are... actually coping, you know? Scaring yourself with people's random stories or clickbait articles is absolutely not coping in a healthy way. I hope you're able to find more support for your ongoing anxiety and I'm glad that one person was able to help!